“Who are you? What do you want?” Sendor realized there was an underlying panic to his voice and fought to calm himself.
The man simply smiled. “Someone will be here shortly with a change of clothes and a meal for you. If there is anything else you require, do let him know.” He stood up and walked to the door.
“Please, wait, what day is it?”
The man opened the door.
“No, wait. My assistant, everyone on my jet, where are they? What did you do to them?”
The man left without answering, shutting the door behind him.
Sendor breathed in deeply, steadying himself. He stood up carefully, testing his balance. Once his head cleared he made his way to the bathroom. Like the bedroom, this room was simple, yet it looked new and was spit clean. He washed his face with cool water, used a clean towel to wipe it. Stared at his face in the small mirror. Pale, haggard, gray stubble. Ah, he thought. Stubble. So it must have been, what, a day? Two? He shook his head. He had no idea. He had no idea about anything. Except for one thing. One thing that had his heart go cold with apprehension.
His captor had not bothered to hide his face.
Chapter Nine
The IDSD gates loomed before Donovan. Security was back to normal here after the days of heightened alert mandated by the threat of an attack on this complex and the people in it. He drove up to the main gate and wasn’t surprised when the newly installed barrier opened before him, the armed agents eying him with no suspicion. The automated security system had identified his USFID-issued car well before he even approached the complex’s gate, then tagged him inside it. His security clearance here did the rest, even though the formal vetting process had not yet been completed by IDSD’s Brussels headquarters. He was, after all, part of Oracle’s security protocol now.
IDSD Missions was a distance away from the gate, deep inside the secure complex, and Donovan made the way in his car. Reaching the building, he pulled into a visitor spot in the attached parking lot and walked in. The place was familiar to him by now, and he headed straight for the elevator bank, then took an elevator to the top floor. Once there, he crossed the open-space work area with its humming activity to the opaque reinforced glass wall separating the war room from the rest of the floor, then walked through the doors that slid open silently as he approached them. This was where critical operations, missions worldwide that determined lives and fates, were overseen from.
No one stopped him when he came in here, not even those who did not yet know who he was. Besides the stringent security system that had allowed him in, he had his temporary IDSD ID on beside his USFID badge, identifying him by his image, his name and a code that allowed him in here, and near her. Those who did know him acknowledged him with a wave, a word at times, as he turned left and skirted the workspaces that dominated the floor, heading toward the offices of the critical mission experts.
The woman he loved was in her office, leaning back on her desk, her eyes on a wall screen running data. Oracle was evident in her stance, in the slight narrowing of her eyes. She was thinking, he could tell. Focused on whatever was on that screen that she needed to place in some context he had no idea about. He couldn’t even make out what was on there, it was running, switching, too fast. Not too fast for her, though. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching her, then entered and came to stand beside her, leaning back on the desk as she was.
She smiled, never taking her eyes off the screen. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to Frank. Then I’m due at a meeting here, a videoconference.”
“So you’re not here to see me?”
He laughed at the tease, at the new freedom of it, the new freedom of them. His hand went up to her waist, and he pulled her to him, nuzzled her neck softly.
She didn’t resist him, not anymore. With him, with this man who from the start had been part of both Lara and Oracle, and had simply accepted her as a whole, loved her for everything that she was, this closeness felt so right even here, in her office, where Oracle took precedence.
“Now I know the story behind Oracle,” Donovan said, throwing another glance at the data screen.
Lara laughed. “Like I said, it wasn’t always like this. At the beginning I was on a lower floor of this building. Frank was in charge of me even then, because he hadn’t worked out where I belonged and wanted to keep an eye on me, but I was down there, in a tiny makeshift office. Aidan was assigned to me from day one, but he was up here, to keep in contact with the war room as it was then. And there wasn’t space for him anywhere near me anyway. But already on my first day at IDSD, I was called up here on a mission. And by a couple of months later, I was running up here for briefings and missions, or to work with the screens in Mission Command or in the conference room. And people were already coming to me, officers and agents would come to my tiny office to talk pending or running missions. And up here, they began more and more to look for me. Require my presence, so to speak, that’s how Aiden called it. It became pretty crazy.” She smiled, going back five years in her mind. “Then one day I came up here for a mission, and they were tearing apart the walls of some rooms that used to be right here, on this side of the floor. And a couple of weeks later, when I came to work my office was empty, and I was asked to come up here. When I did, Aiden was already organizing this space around the tech guys who were scrambling to understand what I needed to do my job. I had a new title, the fittingly obscure critical mission expert, and a code name.”
“And so Oracle officially came to be.”
She chuckled softly. “Yes. It all happened very quickly, I barely had time to settle into it.”
“Frank said you changed with time. Evolved.”
She nodded. “After I was moved up here, they began teaching me faster, completing what I hadn’t learned in my short time as an analyst, or in my even shorter time here. I spent a lot of time in the field, so that I’d see everything first hand. From aircraft and ships and vehicles and all kinds of military technology to training and methods and ways of thinking and strategies and everything they could think of, for friendly and unfriendly militaries, and for others, too. I still do that, when there’s something new I go to see it. At the beginning, with every mission there was something else I needed, something I hadn’t encountered yet. Something new. The sheer amount of information, it was crazy. I barely ever got home.
“But eventually, when I reached a critical mass of knowledge and experience, and what I was doing wasn’t that new to me anymore, I guess my mind was free to explore, see where it could develop, and I began pushing against what I could do, tried to break through every barrier I encountered. There really was no other choice, it was either that or leave someone behind in a mission because what I could do wasn’t enough. Anyway, at some point, when Frank realized this, he had everyone take a step back and let me dictate the pace and what I needed. And it’s been that way since.”
Donovan let out an appreciative whistle. “That must have been one hell of a process to watch from the outside. And it must have taken some effort on your part.”
It was like him to think about this, about her. She still wasn’t used to it. “It suited me,” she said. “I needed to get through that period, to find a way to cope, to . . .”
He wanted to complete her thought, say live, but that wasn’t what she had done. Not then, not until now. “Stay alive. Rebuild,” he said instead.
She leaned into him. This once it was nice that he read her so easily. She found that she liked that he understood. And that she liked the feel of him.
His arm tightened around her.
“Hey, what happened to the dead body?” She suddenly remembered.
“It’s connected to why I’m here. At least, that’s what Evans told me.”
She straightened up and looked at him. “Wait a minute, you said you’re in the videoconference. That means you’re on the ambassador case.”
“Ambassador?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know much about it, just the preliminaries. I’ve got this as a priority.” She turned back to the screen, a slight frown on her face.
“What’s that?”
“One of my pending missions is likely to go forward sometime in the next twenty-four hours. These are the latest updates and regional deployments. And another pending just went an alert notch up, and I’ve got a new one, if that will come in it’ll be as an unscheduled emergency intervention, it’s something outside the alliance that we might have to react to.”
He frowned inwardly. She spoke as if this was the most natural thing in the world for her, dealing with these missions. And she was Oracle, after all. But he still worried about the pressure on her. “Will you also be in on this ambassador one?”
She shrugged. “Depends.”
Which meant, he knew, depends on how wrong it goes. “Well, anything that doesn’t target you is fine with me.”
She smiled. “No, I think we’re done with that.”
“Good,” he said, and kissed her, lingering. Wanted to linger some more but this wasn’t the place, or the time. Stealing another moment of the kiss anyway, he turned to go, leaving her with a smile and more than a bit of flutter.
Scholes looked up as Donovan greeted Celia and walked into his office. “Well, good to see you here,” he said and settled back in his chair, which creaked dangerously. He squinted at the younger man. “You gave us quite a scare, you know.”
Donovan’s eyes flickered toward Lara’s office before he sat down.
Scholes saw the glance. “So now you know. Lara said she told you everything.”
Donovan said nothing.
“I couldn’t say anything. Very few know the entire story, and no one can access that part of her IDSD file. She made me promise her that back then. The offenses, by the way, whether Internationals, US, or alliance, don’t exist anymore. That one was a collective decision by everyone involved, considering what she can do. Anyway, I couldn’t tell you.”
Donovan frowned. He understood Scholes better now, this hardened military veteran who was so protective of Lara. Not just Oracle, as Donovan had thought when the vice admiral had first asked him to keep an eye on her. But Lara, too, the young woman who’d lost her brother and the man she loved and had then gone straight into the war zone they were killed in, avenged their deaths, and then returned to do all she could to prevent what had happened to them from happening to others, and to prevent other loved ones from going through what she had. And he appreciated the fact that while the vice admiral had said nothing, he did try to hint, and that everything he had said and done was for her.
But he was still angry. “I understand,” he said quietly. “But if you had, if anyone had told me any of it, I would have handled the incident I was involved in in New Mexico differently, in terms of the information she got from USFID. Certainly its timing. She didn’t have to go through this.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe you both did.”
Donovan contemplated him. “I would think you wouldn’t approve of us, her and me. My job has already put me in danger.”
“True. But I’ve seen you with her. And I’ve seen her since she’s met you. I never thought I’d see that.” Scholes sighed. “I’ll have to trust that you’ll always do your best to come back to her, safe.”
“No,” Donovan said mildly, prompting a perplexed look from Scholes. “I won’t try. I will come back to her. Always.”
Even though what the younger man was saying was impossible to promise, Scholes found himself believing him.
“Of course,” Donovan continued, “as far as you’re concerned, you do realize I’ll be a pain.”
“How so?”
“I will do anything to protect her. She is your Oracle, but she is my Lara.”
With everything that had happened, Scholes understood what Donovan was aiming at. He sighed. “Considering the fact that I was the one who asked you to protect her in the first place, I think that’s only fair.”
Donovan nodded, then turned to the other thing he’d been planning to deal with as soon as he could. He glanced at Lara’s office. “While we’re at it, let’s talk cars a second,” he said.
“What?” Scholes was caught off guard.
“She hates the car you gave her.”
“I know. But you and I both know I can’t just let her replace the car she had lost with an identical one. It’s not secure enough anymore, Donovan, and IDSD will no longer be lenient about her safety.”
Donovan looked at him thoughtfully.
“At least we have a new one on order, Lara has already been called in today for all the necessary additions, so that our car fleet techs can retrofit it when it arrives. But she refused.”
“Is it like the temporary one she has?”
“Yes, just next year’s model. It’s our most secure car, Donovan.”
“A secure car she won’t like is as dangerous as the car she used to have. And may I remind you that she blew up the last one, and that one she liked.”
“Yes, but my priority is to make sure she’s safe—” Scholes stopped, remembering who he was talking to. Donovan wouldn’t allow anything that would put Lara in danger. They both wanted her safe.
And they both wanted her happy.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what. Show me something she would like, and that security approves, and I’ll authorize it.” He stood up as Celia motioned to him from the doorway. “Come on, that’s us.”
The conference room of IDSD Missions’ war room was nearly empty, but not for the lack of participants. The videoconference taking place here was being held across three countries in two continents. The room held Admiral James Helios, head of IDSD US and interim head of its diplomacy arm, Vice Admiral Frank Scholes, Helios’s second-in-command and head of IDSD Missions, who made the introductions all around, and the only non-IDSD participants in the meeting, the director of US Global Intelligence Paul Evans and USFID-SIRT Special Agent in Charge Donovan Pierce. Other than them, wall screens featured two participants from IDSD’s headquarters in Brussels and one from its temporary peacekeeping base at the Brčko demilitarized district on the border between Republika Srpska and Bosnia, tension and weariness evident on all their faces, and not only because of the lateness of the hour in Europe.
Hugh Jeffries, head of IDSD HQ Intelligence, came to the point without wasting any time. “Two days ago, an IDSD diplomatic jet disappeared over Europe. On it were our Ambassador George Sendor, his personal assistant, and the regular aircrew and a protective detail. They were on their way from Brčko District to Brussels via IDSD-Alliance Jadran Air-Sea Base at Split, in Croatia. The ambassador was due to join the semi-annual meeting of our High Council and the heads of IDSD’s branches worldwide. A short time after its disappearance, the jet was found standing, apparently intact—something the inspection lab at our main Europe air base at Mons has already confirmed—on Cres, the Croatian island. The crew, the protective detail and the ambassador’s assistant were found still in their seats, each killed with a bullet to the back of the head. The ambassador was gone.”
Donovan sat up. A bullet to the back of the head, just like Berman.
Jeffries, sitting at his impeccably organized desk, paused, his intelligent eyes taking in everyone on the split-view screen before him. More than half a decade in this office, he knew all of them except for the USFID agent, who had been brought in by Evans. However, he certainly knew who the man was, and had concurred with Evans about involving him in this situation.
He considered, then decided to proceed with a brief account of the ambassador’s current engagement in its immediate context, to ensure both the IDSD and non-IDSD participants would have the background required. Inconsistencies in the knowledge the people dealing with the situation at hand had could not be allowed, and its importance had to be understood by all.
“Two and a half years ago,” he said, never appearing anything other than calm and composed, “Ambassador Sendor ended his commission in Italy.
He had already been assigned elsewhere, but had first returned to Brussels for a month, intending to wait there until the ambassador he was scheduled to replace would end his respective commission.
“During that time, Council Head Stevenssen had asked him to assist in resolving the dispute in the Republika Srpska and Bosnia region. I remind you that despite the harsh lessons of the Bosnia-Herzegovina war at the end of the last century, and the decision of the former European Union two and a half decades later to allow the country to become a member in order to assist it in achieving political and economic stability and to keep its Republika Srpska enclaves from falling under control of the Russian Federation, something the latter had been close to attaining, another war eventually broke out between the Serbs and the Bosniaks. A brutal war that saw Republika Srpska with its Serb majority fight the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with its Bosniak majority and each ethnicity turning on the other’s minority within the two autonomies, once again committing acts that cannot be seen as anything but ethnic cleansing. In fact, on the way they had managed to chase out the third minority, the Croats, who were taken in by Croatia to protect them.
“That war finally ended with a forced ceasefire, but the ceasefire was precarious and as soon as the countries that had brokered it had turned their attention elsewhere, busy with their own problems—the European Union had broken apart by then—relations between the two main ethnicities, Bosniaks and Serbs, deteriorated, eventually reaching a point where they threatened to rekindle the war again. This time, we and what was then already Joint Europe were there to broker a rather unique agreement, backed by a referendum, under which, instead of resorting to war again, Bosnia and Herzegovina was officially split into two, with the Serbs keeping the name of their original enclaves, Republika Srpska, and the Bosniaks choosing to remain with the name Bosnia, in order, in their words, to make clear to their enemies who they are—Bosniaks.
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